The present invention relates to a selective pager for use with a paging system, and more particularly, to a selective pager capable of effecting group paging or sending a message through group broadcast transmission.
In a paging system, when a telephone number of a selective pager is dialed by way of a telephone set, there is called a selective paging base station, which radios an individual number of a selective pager corresponding to the telephone number. Upon receipt of the individual number, a beeper of the selective pager is activated. To send a message to the selective pager, the message is transmitted in the form of a DTMF signal by way of the telephone set, and the message appears on a display of the selective pager.
To simplify operations which involve pressing of push buttons to send a telephone number or a message, an existing selective pager of the paging system is provided with a DTMF signal generation circuit. A telephone number is converted into a DTMF signal, and the thus-converted DTMF signal is sounded from a speaker of the pager. Alternatively, a telephone number and a message are converted into a DTMF signal, and the thus-converted DTMF signal is sounded from the speaker. By means of the thus-converted DTMF signal, the telephone number is automatically dialed by way of a transmitter of the telephone set.
To simplify operations required to call a plurality of selective pagers, a group broadcast transmission is carried out, wherein a single message is transmitted from the base station of the paging system to the selective pagers having identical addresses.
In the existing paging system set forth, in order to effect group transmission from the base station, a paging system service provider must writes a group call address into the selective pagers. Further, the group call service is effectively resident solely within the paging system of the same service provider. Consequently, a group of selective pagers across a plurality of paging service systems cannot be paged at the same time.
To send a single message data set to a plurality of selective pagers through use of the DTMF transmission function of the selective pager, the user of the selective pager must repeatedly perform call-originating operations several times. Specifically, after the telephone number of a party to be paged has been transmitted from a DTMF signal generation circuit, the message data set is transmitted from the DTMF signal generation circuit. Further, the telephone number of the party to be paged and the message data set are transmitted from the DTMF signal generation circuit. A round of these operations must be repeated. As mentioned above, in any case, many problems are encountered in realizing a group call.